Posts with tag valanyr

Quite a week on the podcast last Saturday -- Alex Ziebart, Adam Holisky, Turpster and I spent a considerable amount of time answering your emails (talking about everything from whether VoA has been ruined with the new raid boss to the never-say-die issue about which tank is best to take with you), and when we finally did sit down to the Meat of the Show, there was a lot, there, too: an interview with Tom Chilton, who Val'anyr is for (and that crazy proc), and we even snuck in a little Bloodlust/Heroism talk. Listen in to the show on any of the links below.

And don't forget: this Wednesday at 6pm Eastern, we'll be doing the show at a special time, since I'm out of town next weekend. And our live video show will be going down on the 23rd at 3:30pm Eastern, so mark your calendars for that if you like.

Thanks for tuning in, and enjoy the show.

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Today on the show, it's an all-star cast of WoW Insider folks: we'll welcome Alex Ziebart and Adam Holisky both on the show to talk about the latest news from the World of Warcraft. And as usual, Turpster will join us with his own brand of silliness (don't miss our newest feature, Turpster's Tips, in which he tells you something that may or may not help you play the game better). And what is the latest news, you ask? Why, it's our interview with Tom Chilton (featuring mentions of dance moves, new Druid forms, and player housing), that legendary mace and who it's for, whether the Bloodlust love should have some spreading around, and Alex's general disappointment with the game world lately. The show starts up at May 9, 2009 3:30 PM EDT over on our Ustream page.

And we've got a full schedule in the coming weeks as well: next week, we'll be recording the show live on Wednesday, May 13th at 6pm Eastern, so those of you who aren't usually available on Saturday will have a chance to listen in. And then on the 23rd, we'll be back live at the usual Saturday time, not only with audio but with video, as we present our video show, to thank you all for boosting our Twitter page up to over 9.000 followers. We've got a lot of fun stuff planned -- trust me when I say it'll be a cavalcade of guests and jokes and good times.

And then after that, we'll be welcoming on a special guest host. Brigwyn's charity auction raised a whopping $2,500 for Child's Play this past week, and some awesome, caring fan paid almost $480 to join Turpster and I on the podcast for a week. So stay tuned for that. We'll have them on soon, and they can disagree with me or argue with Turpster or do whatever they want for the whole show. Should be a lot of fun.

Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a new UI blog for all classes. So how about them 3.1.2 changes?

The upcoming 3.1.2 patch is introducing some minor modifications to some of our Priestly spells. I'd have to say that it's an overall net nerf to Discipline. But in all honesty, I did feel we were slightly overpowered. Yes I'd say some of these were designed to address PvP concerns. Now I don't PvP competitively but when Priest/Rogue or Priest/Anything starts to have mass appeal, I pay a bit more attention and I ask questions to the players that do arena often. It's not that I don't like to arena or hit the battlegrounds. It's always been a time factor for me (due to raiding, writing and school). PvP simply gets the short end of the stick and ends up being something I can't get involved with.

In an unusual move, Blizzard has spelled out exactly how the proc on Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings works. There are probably one or two of you who consider it a spoiler, so I'll put it after the cut.

Paladin blogger Ferarro thinks that the new legendary mace from Ulduar is a Paladin weapon and she explains why in a detailed post over at her nook. While Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings is a mace that all healing classes can use, the "discovery" of the weapon's proc -- something that's been speculated on for a while -- puts the weapon squarely in the hands of a Paladin. Even Allison found it something of a bummer (she plays a Druid) when she found out about the proc, and even talked about how to assign it when your guild gets those fragments to drop.

Ferarro compares Val'anyr to other best-in-slot competitors, from the Turning Tide from Kel'thuzad to the new Ulduar weapons. Given that the proc seems to favor humongous heals, it seems tailor made for Holy Paladins, masters of nuke healing. The effect also seems to proc pretty often according to Ferraro, who reveals, "for what it's worth, when I saw it in action a while ago it was proccing 100% of the time". Not only that, but she points out that the lack of Spirit makes it sub-par for Priests; the lack of MP5 makes it less than attractive for Shamans; and notes that Druids aren't exactly in the market for Crit Rating, which Val'anyr has. It's a rather interesting read, and something I'll probably send to our GM for some, um, consideration...

Like Boubouille, I'm pretty surprised to find that Val'anyr, the legendary healer mace from Ulduar-25, is up on the Armory, but there it is [update: it's been removed from the US Armory; still up on the EU Armory], and that means we now know all the stats on it. Just on the off-chance that someone considers this information to be a spoiler, I've put it behind the cut, so click on if you want to know what the Hammer of the Ancient Kings has to offer.

With Ulduar due to hit in the near future, Tales of a Priest addressed a pretty timely subject for 25-man raiders yesterday with a blog post on Val'anyr and how you're going to assign it. As it's a constructed Legendary like Atiesh rather than being a dropped item like the Warglaives and Thori'dal (sudden thought: why do the caster Legendaries have to be assembled, whereas the melee/ranged Legendaries just drop?), you're going to have to put some time and thought into which one of your healers is going to get this baby first.

It's not exactly the world's most comfortable question for a guild leader, but I like how Derevka lays the issue out so matter-of-factly, and then goes on to address an interesting point concerning Val'anyr's proc. Your ideal candidate is a good healer with great attendance who plans on hanging around for a while, but then there's the question -- which class gets the most use out of the proc?

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Hi again, everyone! I may be covering The Queue for the rest of the week while Adam Holisky flees from a righteous flood. We usually trade off days, but he's kind of a wuss and can't take a little water, so I'll spare him the tragedy of needing to toddle through a puddle or whatever.

pants asked...

"I know that they are taking away the proto-drakes for the raid achievements in 3.1, but will the title "Champion of the Frozen Wastes" be gone as well for it's respective achievement?"

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Hey, everyone. I just wanted to take a moment to remind all of you that Adam and I are not the same entity, even if we both have A names and contribute to the same column. There's been a lot of confusion over the last year, so let me repeat: Adam Holisky and Alex Ziebart are two different people. Adam is not Alex, Alex is not Adam. And when you throw Allison into the mix, Allison is neither Adam nor Alex and they are not she. Are we on the same page here? Great.

Herumor asked...

"As things are now without the Maelstrom, is there any point to adding the upcoming water mounts without a large water based area? I don't really see a use for them other than showing off, and even that's kind of difficult to do."

Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week, Matt checks out some of the PTR loot along and a suggestion of Hymns that we will never see in game.

Have you checked out some of the drops from the PTR yet? There's a great staff from Iron Council that I'm definitely eyeing. I know a lot of spellcasters favour main hands and off hands. I always had a soft spot for staves (because of their looks). But most staves just could not compete with their main hand and off hand counterparts. Rapture will be an upgrade I'll be eyeing. There's also the Ironmender which is an offhand complement for Priests. I haven't seen any spellpower main hands yet but I'm sure there will be some popping up soon enough.

We've been wondering for a while how exactly the Ulduar storyline plays out in 3.1; this may seem a bit silly or lorelol, given how much time is going to be spent running the instance itself or its myriad of raid bosses and hard modes, but I like to know what's driving me to complete an instance beyond phatty purpz.

You can obviously infer a lot from the instance itself and the names of each respective room, but for those seeking a little more information, Wowhead's PTR page has you covered. There were a few quests added in this most recent PTR build that give us tantalizing bits of Ulduar storyline and show Blizzard's intention to create clear progressions -- not only in the 10- and 25-man versions of Ulduar, but a reward and progression path for those blazing a trail in the hard mode versions of each instance. A fine notion indeed.

Oh, and if you wanted to know just how to forge that new legendary mace...

This writeup will be spoiler-heavy! If you don't wish to know anything about the secrets that lie within Ulduar, don't click the link below. You've been warned.

Video of the legendary mace coming in patch 3.1, Val'anyr, the Gavel of Ancient Kings, is already making the rounds. The animation is pretty cool, but I remain unconvinced of its overall awesomeness. We can't see any of the particle effects this weapon may have, because none of that stuff is ever built into the model. We won't know what it really looks like until we see it in-game somewhere, or someone digs out the other bits and pieces it all together.

The animation itself, which is the whole point of watching the video, is really freaking sweet. If it's an animation that happens semi-randomly and isn't just a constant thing, I really, really like it. My only concern about the weapon is, again, the particle effects. Something really cool looking is going to need to fill in that gap in the middle. As long as there's something there, this weapon is going to be amazingly cool. If there isn't, it's going to be amazingly boring. A very 'make it or break it' situation, I think. That's just my opinion, though. Do you guys disagree?

3.1 and Ulduar are coming soon. No doubt a lot of you have been looking forward to seeing what your reward for hacking apart a variety of priceless Titan artifacts and servants of the Old Gods would be. MMO-Champion, as always, has your back! They've released a preview for the weapon and accessory models that'll be in Ulduar, and they look fantastic. The theme of the instance seems to carry through into all of its gear, and I'm going to love just how good my guild and I will look after a bit of time in there.

The image above is a paladin holding one of the Ulduar shields and the much-touted Val'anyr, Gavel of Ancient Kings, and that's just the tip of the iceberg from MMOC, who promises a video of it in action very soon.

Bear in mind these are still tentative models and the art may change, but even then, what are you waiting for? Santa won't get mad if you peek. Go go go!

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Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.

A brand new legendary weapon is coming to the game in patch 3.1. Val'anyr, the Gavel of Ancient Kings will be a new Atiesh-like weapon, formed from 40 "Fragments of Val'anyr," likely found within Ulduar. MMO-Champion also has the tooltip of what happens after the fragments are assembled -- you get a "Shattered Fragments of Val'anyr" that starts a quest, which will eventually reward a Paladin, Priest, Shaman or Druid with the hammer itself.

We don't, however, have an actual tooltip of the mace itself, so while these tooltips suggest a healing mace, this could work the same way as Atiesh, where you could finish the quest to reassemble it by choosing one of four options, each with different stats for classes and specs. So while these tooltips show healers, there could also be a DPS and/or tank version of the mace as well. In fact, I'll say it right now: this is probably a Hunter weapon.

But either way, there'll be another Legendary item in the game soon. to 5.

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Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.